• The secretiveness of the Saudi oil establishment as well as other Middle Eastern and OPEC producers for the last 25 years has not been part of an effort to conceal troubling realities or enhance political interest.

• Aramco and its contractors have developed proprietary technology for wringing oil from mature fields and sustaining production that is far superior to that applied by the world's best known publicly held oil companies in other major oil provinces.

• The phenomena that have signaled the onset of decline at oilfields elsewhere in the world, and that have been observed in Saudi Arabia's mainstay fields for many years, somehow do not mean coming decline for Saudi oil production.

• The Saudis have chosen to concentrate production in their aging super-giant fields, even if this risks hastening depletion by overproducing, rather than spread the burden by developing additional discovered fields. But many other fields have been kept in reserve and could make a significant contribution once they are brought onto production.

• Saudi Aramco's exploration program has missed additional giant or super-giant  oilfields lying beneath the desert sands, but future exploration efforts will surely find them in time to head off a supply crisis.

• The reserves in Ghawar field really do greatly exceed the estimates made by Aramco in the 1970s.

• Ghawar, by virtue of its unprecedented size, is simply an exception to all the truths and principles that have governed production and depletion of oil in all of the world's other super-giant fields.

• Aramco could have grown its oil output at any time in wanted during the last 20 years, but the world markets never had need for more oil.

Matt Simmons, Twilight in the Desert, pages 283-284, posted here by Ron Patterson